GORDON DADDS LAUNCHES GROUND-BREAKING REDRESS AND REMEDIATION SERVICE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH DUFRAIN

Sep 29, 2016

GD Financial Markets, part of legal and professional services firm Gordon Dadds, has announced that it is partnering with leading data company Dufrain to launch a ground-breaking Redress and Remediation service.

The Redress and Remediation offering will help organisations to address increasing pressure from regulators and consumer groups, ensuring that they treat customers fairly and comply with legislation such as the Consumer Credit Act (CCA). The partnership will, for the first time, bring together management consultants, lawyers, actuaries and data experts, to identify compliance gaps and support bespoke remediation activities.

Although principally focused on financial services organisations, redress and remediation activities are increasingly spreading to other sectors such as utilities. Recent high-profile customer detriment cases have severely damaged consumer confidence and emphasised the need for all businesses to prepare for exposure to regulatory driven issues.

Paul Saunders, Partner of GD Financial Markets, comments:

“Mis-selling and technical breaches of regulations such as the CCA have resulted in consumer repayments in excess of £30bn over the last five years. The financial, and reputational impact, of non-compliance is significant.

“All firms must be able to show consistently that fair treatment of customers is at the heart of their business model. It is the responsibility of senior management to not only establish the right culture that converts good intentions into fair outcomes, but to also attest that customer accounts are compliant.

“The combined expertise of our team uniquely places us to identify and remedy non-compliance issues. At the same time, we have structured our offering in such a way that we are able to provide a more modular service, dealing with specific areas as required.”

Jay Parekh, Managing Director of Dufrain, comments:

“Our experience of redress and remediation programmes has proven that organisations need to assess current systems, processes, policies and data to identify the affected customers and extent of financial impact. Complexity of remediation programmes rapidly increases as multiple systems and data-sets across the organisation are reviewed.

“We have found that key data aspects are often omitted, not fully understood or under-appreciated which can result in delays, rework and further detriment to customers as well as increased programme costs.

“Furthermore, the pace and level of accuracy required in remediation programmes is significantly underestimated. Our partnership and approach brings together key remediation skills and experience, providing a proactive, flexible and expert team to drive bespoke and responsive solutions.”

Alex Ktorides, Gordon Dadds Regulatory Solutions Partner:

“We are delighted to be part of the legal team delivering this innovative one-stop solution. Getting the right approach, project management, data extraction and fast track settlement is key, and we are primed to deliver an embedded and tight legal framework to ensure that happens. The team that has been put together is experienced and deliberately structured to deliver maximum value for our clients.”

GD Financial Markets launched its first service offering in June 2016 with a Derivative Documentation Managed Service. The service enables investment banks to meet new rules for margin requirements under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation which comes into force in 2017.